Hugolina

ON ST. HUGOLINA, VIRGIN,

At Vercelli in Insubria.

In the year 1300.

Hugolina, virgin, at Vercelli in Insubria (B.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

Concerning the cult of this altogether astonishing Virgin there had to be doubt for some time, For confirming the cult although two Lives were at hand in which she is most expressly called a Saint: there had to be doubt, I say, because the most diligent collector of the Italian Saints, Filippo Ferrari himself, of Alessandria and so a neighbor of the people of Vercelli, made no mention of her even by a word, either in his greater work on the Saints of Italy, or in his other fuller Catalogue, nor were other certain monuments at hand except an unusual image, representing Hugolina or Ugolina in an exotic manner with the inscription "St. Ugolina, pray to God for us." The Franciscan Writers Gonzaga, Wadding, and Hueber indeed favored it, adorning her at least with the title of Blessed and numbering her among the Tertiaries of the Order, as will be plain below. But on the contrary there seemed to fight the deep silence concerning her of Arthur du Monstier in his most vast Martyrology of the whole Order, where nevertheless countless others are reported adorned with the title of Blessed, which they certainly have not yet merited. There would have prevailed above the rest the tested skill of Castellan in discerning Saints, who expressly places Hugolina among the Saints in his universal Martyrology, if the long-desired monuments of Vercelli had from another source confirmed the whole matter.

[2] Opportunely at last these were found almost by chance in the Roman Itinerary of our Elders Henschen and Papebroch, the itinerary of Papebroch availed, who, passing through Vercelli on their return, most diligently noted those things which, to have described here, will be to have abundantly demonstrated the Blessed one's cult. Where there is treatment of the church of the Minorite Fathers of St. Mary of Bethlehem near Vercelli, among other relics exposed on the altar to public veneration, there are enumerated two busts of gilded wood, one of which is of Blessed Favorinus of Vercelli, hermit, the other contains half the part of the bones of Blessed Hugolina, whose cult is still most celebrated on the VIII of August. The other part of the bones with the head is in her own chapel, or the neighboring church, which is surrounded on every side with paintings of her life and with votive tablets hung up, whose beautiful altar of gilded plaster contains the said relics in place of an altarpiece. On the right side near the altar there is a place in which the said bones formerly rested, which these verses in marble still attest:

There are kept the sacred bones of the virgin Ugolina, Who, fleeing her father's incest, sought the deserts.

They also showed us a bull of Indulgences granted in the year 1641 on the XI of August to those visiting the church of St. Hugolina.

[3] and the monuments of Vercelli; Being abundantly furnished with these helps, I did not think that those things should be awaited which I had in vain asked for by repeated letters at Vercelli, but I straightway set about collecting those things which, among monuments however scanty, I had found for illustrating the origin, age, and deeds of the most illustrious Virgin. They are, as I was just saying, an astonishing image, to which it is now established that the title of Saint is rightly prefixed, and two Italian Lives composed after the manner of the nation by Father Ludovico of Vercelli (di Vercelli), of the Order of Minors of the Observance, of which the shorter was published at Turin in the year 1632, the other at Milan in 1655, both of them not historical narrations of deeds set forth, but most wordy panegyric orations, and not so worthy to be rendered into Latin, so that I have judged far preferable the brief indeed but polished eulogies left us in Gonzaga, Wadding, and Hueber, to which what can further be added from both little works I shall not neglect to subjoin. Behold therefore the words of Gonzaga from page 344, whence, since the rest have taken their own, these alone will sufficiently give light. About to treat of the beginnings of the Franciscan monastery there, he thus begins:

[4] When a certain noble and devout man of Vercelli, by name Janomius, and likewise after having traversed all the places of the Holy Land, had returned to Vercelli, which was his fatherland, about to bid farewell to this wicked world and more happily to obey God most good and great, took care that a certain hermitage be built humbly enough, three hundred paces from Vercelli, a city of Italy beyond the Po, near an ancient little building sacred to the blessed Virgin Mary; and there, the hermit's habit being taken up, he persevered in the greatest abstinence, vigils, and prayer to the last breath of his life. But after a little time, when a certain most beautiful virgin of Vercelli, by name Ugolina, had determined to keep her virginity for Christ her spouse, and, the bloody enemy of the human race especially procuring it, was being solicited to incest by her own parent, the prudent virgin, lest at some time, being frustrated of her purpose, she should lose so great a gift, her paternal house being left, with no one knowing, betook herself to the aforesaid hermitage.

[5] Where also for forty-seven continuous years, under a most mean habit, Gonzaga's narration. and with the male sex feigned, under the name of Hugo, she persevered in a certain closed cell, that she might not be seen by anyone, living only on alms offered. She therefore, having died about the year of the Lord 1300, and being entombed there in an honorable place, on account of the signs of sanctity which occurred about her death, by the people of Vercelli and their Bishop, to whom the whole series of the deed was revealed by a certain religious Dominican father, who had been confessor to the aforesaid virgin Ugolina, the aforementioned hermitage lacked an inhabitant for very many years. Nevertheless the little building contiguous to it was, on account of the miracles which happened there by the merits of blessed Ugolina, most highly commended to the people of Vercelli. And when it threatened utter ruin, lest so great a devotion of the peoples

toward her should at some time vanish, both by the people of Vercelli and also by the most reverend William their bishop, the matter was brought to this, that the little building, being granted to the Friars Observant, was raised into a most beautiful church about the year 1453.

[6] These things being premised, we come gradually to a clearer knowledge of St. Ugolina and of her most austere life, which will not a little be helped by the grim likeness painted on the small frontispiece of her church, A grim likeness as it is here represented, as our Father Giovanni Battista Mosca afterward taught me, who from Milan at last sent me the accounts which he could obtain from Vercelli, plainly confirming what has hitherto been said, and adding that the said little church of St. Hugolina, contiguous to the old hermitage, is distant about 40 paces from the greater Bethlehem church of the Minorite Fathers, yet in such a way that it is joined to it by an intervening portico, through which there lies an approach thence into the convent of the Fathers. Mosca proceeds in this manner: There is seen a painted likeness above the door, of Blessed Ugolina standing with bare feet, with hair loosed without order: she is clothed with a hairshirt, in her right hand she carries a crucifix, but in her left the rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, and her Office. But under the image is this inscription: Blessed Ugolina of Vercelli, hermit, of the Casami. Behold it itself.

[7] it does not sufficiently express her penances. Although you have here expressed the terrifying likeness of the most innocent penitent Virgin, yet it is far from the monstrous torments with which for forty-seven continuous years she did not cease to wear away her tender little body, namely by a perpetual fast interrupted only by bread and water, by hard scourgings, by lying on the ground and indeed among thorns, not to speak now of her dreadful and almost daily wrestlings with the enemies of the human race dreadfully beating her, so that not rarely they pricked her with sharp points even to the shedding of blood: on describing which chiefly in oratorical fashion the writer of Vercelli spends his labor, which would that we had accurately narrated by some contemporary writer. There is indeed cited a Life by the Saint's confessor Father Valentine of the Order of Preachers, but that, however much we have pressed for it, has not come to our hands: but these being for a while set aside, let us try in a few words to dig out her origin, age, and course of life from the praised writer of Vercelli.

[8] The Virgin's age is discussed, The orator sins in this, that, a long description of Vercelli being premised, he altogether neglects to indicate the names of her parents, being content to have declared that she was of Vercelli, born of noble parents of the Cazzami. You would also miss this in him especially, that in defining the Saint's age he stumbles most shamefully. For in the former or lesser Life, page 10, he marks the year of her birth as 1239; but on page 33 he says she died in the year 1300 on the VIII day of August, and nevertheless asserts that she lived seventy-one years. He in some fashion recognizes and corrects the error in the other Life, when on page 28 he brings her to the hermitage in the fourteenth year of her age, to which if there be added the forty-seven of austere solitude, there will arise no more than 61 years, as he there confesses on page 97, again referring her death to the year 1300, but to the XVI day of August, guessing many things as to why the VIII of the same month is today observed, which little concerns us, provided the day of solemn veneration on which we here place her be certain. Nor have we judged that heed should be paid to what they record is somewhere written, that St. Hugolina died in the year 1288, against which all other writers, at least those whom we have been able to consult, agree unanimously with Father Ludovico of Vercelli in the year of death 1300.

[9] Further, in weighing minutiae I shall not imitate him. He disputes about the very name of Hugolina, and whence she received her name. namely whether it was ever known before not only at Vercelli, but in all Italy and the rest of the world: it pertains more closely to the matter that the virgin herself, still very young, that she might more safely and securely lie hidden, feigned herself male in habit under the name of Hugo, and so through all the rest of her life, unknown to the very people of Vercelli, in that foul hermitage, sustained only by the alms of pious men, most constantly kept a most strait kind of life, intent only on the already mentioned penances and assiduous macerations of her little body, to which she joined a perpetual zeal for prayer, by which she might offer to her divine spouse Christ Jesus alone a spectacle worthy of a most faithful virgin spouse, being accordingly heaped and endowed by Him with countless heavenly delights, in an exercise of torments almost intolerable to human strength, with the laurel of perseverance, and let us say the crown of merits, made illustrious also with so many and so great prodigies, that even while living she was called only by the name of a Saint, since in habit she bore herself as a man.

[10] But with how great glory she was made illustrious at her death and after her death, She dies not without prodigies. the writer of Vercelli pursues at greater length after his manner: let it suffice to have noted here that she foretold the day of her death, if not also the hour, for which she prepared herself most holily, as she had lived, not without many and marvelous signs, especially a very lofty column of fire resting upon her cell, by which spectacle almost the whole city, being moved, ran together to her, being wonderfully astounded by many other lights flying about, nay also by a manifold and most sweet harmony of angels bearing her most pure soul into heaven: of all which the Bishop himself, a witness, took care of the funeral with all the solemnity he could, which, breathing a most fragrant odor, wonderfully refreshed all the astonished townsfolk. But her posthumous glory countless miracles have attested, especially benefits almost incredible, not only at that time, but through four whole centuries and more wont to be obtained by pious worshippers, which could here be narrated more distinctly, if the piety of the people of Vercelli toward their most holy patroness had extended itself thus far. This alone remains, that we subjoin here brief eulogies of the Saint, not in the manner in which our writer himself published them, but in continuous discourse, at least the first:

TO THE HOLY HUGOLINA,

virgin of Vercelli,

EULOGIES.

Hugolina, virgin, at Vercelli in Insubria (B.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

Hugolina, famous in lineage, more famous in virtues, shines alone among the people of Vercelli in sanctity. A girl, she fled her fellow-citizens, herself rich; she withdrew from her father, she went to the desert — who does not marvel? For more than nine lusters she inhabited the wilderness, she willed not worldly things, by her flight she broke up the delights of the flesh. Who is more prudent? She spurned the phalanxes of evil demons, she terrified Goliath, she slew the plotting Holofernes. To her be the palm and the triumph. Dead she lived; her father sought her when found; in the solitude she grew dim of eye, but did not lose the light. Who has heard such things? She lived unknown, devoted to the Virgin Mary; she paid her vows to Christ. Things much to be wondered at. Stripped of costly garments, she clothed the naked; her face grew pale with assiduous fasts; her hand, not fasting, fed the poor; and the more she is humbled, the more her body is lifted up by a heavenly cloud, to be joined to the citizens of heaven. She speaks as a prophetess, she foretells the hanging of a steward; he went to the evil cross who would not have Hugolina as his guide. Let sinners greatly fear. That she might serve God more attentively, she endured scourges many times, unwearied; many times she is tempted, but is not overcome, a conqueror among conquering women. Often she groaned, she did not rage; many times she mourned and spurned the devil; she wore a coat of mail; he feared, she conquered, she mocked him. A new kind of victory. She kept fasts, she did not shrink from silence; in heavy contests she stood unmoved; the demon, always conquered by the Virgin, withdrew, by the grace of God. At length she departed, she did not withdraw; she closed her eyes, not her powers; lights appear; upon thorns she closed her last day, in the upper air she first appeared; she commended her spirit to Christ, and gave her body to the earth, entombed in this place. On earth she shines with miracles, in heaven she shines again like the sun; she grants pardon to sinners, the Virgin, being asked, concedes what is desired. Adore her, reader.

Born rich in the cell of Venus, Reborn in Bethlehem, Born for the Virgin, not for Venus.

Nay, dying to Venus, rising for the Virgin, She goes forth from the cell of Venus, Blessed, about to enter heaven.

She had a father famous in birth, Obscure in morals, Loving, and out of his mind.

He loved the Virgin, not virginity, The comeliness of her soul, Being about to defile it with obscene lips.

He defiled with his eyes, he did not defile with kisses; He assailed the Virgin, and found her a virgin.

She forsook her father and her fatherland, Loving the desert.

She put off the mind of a woman, While she put on the garment of an anchorite, And the name of Hugo.

A fugitive, as into a sacred asylum, She entered the grove, about to see no one of mortals.

In which she sought the citizens of heaven, And found those of hell.

She indulged much in hunger, little in want; She quenched the tinder by hunger, she always burned with thirst, She poured back more water from her eyes Than she took in, By which draught she shut out both sleep and savor.

She preferred the thicket of the fields To the house of her forefathers.

Where she covered herself with arms to fight in the field, Fleeing from the world, she is kept clean; From the unclean spirit she does not flee; He flees, she put him to flight.

Monstrous shades also With Stygian specters terrified her, That she might depart from the fields.

While they smote her, With bruised body, with whole mind Sometimes she fell, she never yielded; Unarmed she overcame the furies, armed she overcame herself, Mocking the flames of hell, Hidden by the flames of heaven From vain matrons.

By reproving the vanity of the world She felt her eyes growing dim, Affected by vain things.

Her garment consumed, her charity preserved, Putting on a cloud, she often passed beyond the clouds, About to explore the path of the upper air.

At last failing in years, not in arms, Constant in mind, She died with angels, who lived as an angel.

On the same thorns she died on which she had lain. Wept for before death, Dead before the weeping, Before her birth by her father, After her death longed for by her fatherland, Living, called a daughter; dead, a mother. She left a shining fatherland; She did not forsake a mourning one. She receives prayers, She who had been received by prayers; She acquired in heaven What she had sought on earth; About to return she departed, she did not die.

III

O daughters of the King of kings, illustrious Citizens of Sion, celebrate the Saint; And you stars, now given as bright praises To highest Phoebus.

The plectra of men grow dumb, and the lyre Has fallen silent, the song has fled from our mouth; Hence, Hugolina, the heaven of pride demands Your songs.

Behold, she gleams with gems; with violets and roses She wholly blooms, crowned with a double Garland; a double garment also adorns her, Purple and fine linen.

For although the alluring theater of Venus Beheld her childish light, at first she played, Yet she did not sport with the deceitful Nets and hooks of Venus.

She mocked also her father's violated lips, Driven by the mad darts of love, Which with a foul kiss sought the mouth Of his modest Daughter.

But by flight she mocked him; her home being left, She spurned the gilded ceiling, exchanging The highest roofs for the shady Caverns of a hidden wood.

Here her robe feigns the male sex; "I am Hugo," she says; and deservedly departs The name of woman: she was a Heroine Upheld by a trophy.

Here (a wonder!) fearing wild beasts, she puts to flight By her face the comeliness pleasing to a paramour's beauty, And the welcome bloom: a pallid image Takes over her wasted limbs.

Here by hunger she restrains her rebellious senses; From her back hangs a robe woven of iron, A rough hand rages against her body and afflicts Her limbs with scourges.

Here she glows with a purer flame, kindled By the torches of the highest Godhead; her mind Penetrates the skies, sees her Spouse, clings, burns, Takes her delight.

Demon, ah demon, bite your bridle: You will smite the Virgin furiously with rods;

What then? You weave for her head a crown More noble still.

Therefore, O Virgin, let your garlands be for us Shields to check the Stygian furies, And, triumphing in the spaces of heaven, Be our intercessor.